There were times over the offseason when Arizona Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen would pass through the weight room at Salt River Fields expecting it to be devoid of players. Then he would see Corbin Carroll.

“On Dec. 23, Corbin was at our complex working out,” Hazen said, his tone indicating a sort of unsurprised astonishment. “He’s here some days until 4 p.m. Whenever I don’t think somebody’s going to be here, he’s here.”

A year ago, Carroll generated one of the better rookie seasons in baseball history. He helped fuel the Diamondbacks’ run to the World Series. He is the single biggest reason there is genuine and widespread excitement about a baseball season in Arizona for the first time in a long time.

The Diamondbacks won just 84 games in the regular season last year, catching fire at just the right time, and their hopes for maintaining their grip on the Valley’s consciousness center on getting more production from their young core and from the veterans they brought in during an active offseason.

But there is also Carroll. He became the first MLB rookie to hit 25 homers and steal 50 bases. He showed poise in the postseason and seemed almost slump-proof for most of the year. But a case could be made he might still have another level to reach.

He does not push back on that viewpoint.

“I always operate out of the space of having a growth mindset and believing that there’s more,” Carroll said. “I never feel content with one part of my game even if the results were good last year.”

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From a production standpoint, Carroll seemed to go through lulls last season only for a handful of small pockets, mostly just a matter of weeks, sometimes only days. Several of them could be explained by injury.

For nearly three weeks in May, he hit just .200 and did not attempt a stolen base. It came immediately after he rammed his left knee into the fence in Colorado. His numbers also were down for parts of July and August; that came after he felt discomfort in his surgically repaired shoulder on a pair of swings.

“I guess the way I put it is, looking forward at the 2024 season and my goals, a lot of them center around staying as healthy as possible,” Carroll said. “I felt like when I felt good, I went out there and the results were good.”

The one aspect of Carroll’s game that lags behind the rest is his throwing arm, and he said he has worked this offseason in hopes of improving it. He traces the issue to his youth; around age 12 or 13, he hurt his arm pitching in tournament in Palm Springs, Calif., and altered his throwing mechanics as a result.

“I think that the way that I’ve kind of always thrown since then has been a little bit protective, not even like purposefully but subconsciously,” Carroll said.

He said he has worked to be less over the top with his motion this winter, adding that his shoulder alignment also has been a focus, something that throwing a football has helped to address.

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Not long after their magical postseason ended in November, Carroll began showing up at the facility. He started going three days a week before ramping it up to five.

“He’s a superstar player and he’s at our complex working out in December, just prior to Christmas, and then right after,” Hazen said. “I think this is fairly unusual. I feel very fortunate that he plays for us. He embodies what we’re looking for in the players that we have and I’m not surprised. He’s about everything you want to be about.”

Carroll is eager for the new season for a variety of reasons, ranging from the re-signing of outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr., the various additions to the roster and what he sees as the anticipated maturation of several of the team’s second- and third-year players.

“What makes me excited is that there was very conscious work on the part of the front office and ownership and being willing to add to our team and believing in what we did last year as being real,” he said. “Obviously, in a game like baseball there are so few guarantees, but on paper we line up pretty favorably to last year and that excites me.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Corbin Carroll puts in work at DBacks complex to build on rookie success